Nokia today announced that its highly anticipated update for Nokia Maps has left beta stage and is now ready for consumers to download. Here is more info:

Downloaded over 240,000 times since announced in February, Nokia Maps 2.0 has improved its optional Car Navigation, enhanced its pedestrian navigation, added multimedia city guides, now offers satellite images, and is sporting a redesigned user interface. Nokia's mapping and navigation solutions give people navigation features, local content and world maps directly on their mobile device, in a way that only connected devices can.

WALK: - Optional pedestrian navigation efficiently walks you from A to B with visual guidance. It helps you to locate yourself by giving information about the surrounding buildings, streets and parks and, if the device supports it, notifies the direction you are walking.- Nokia Maps 2.0 includes public transportation information (station entrances) data in 17 cities with localized icons for stops.- Advanced multi-sensor positioning using A-GPS, and pedestrian orientation using the compass feature (Nokia 6210 Navigator needed for built-in compass usage)

Nokia Maps 2.0 uses vector maps provided by Navteq and TeleAtlas, Nokia Maps now has maps covering over 200 countries, with over 70 of them navigable. Maps can be downloaded over the air directly to selected devices or by using the Nokia Map Loader on a PC. A new beta version of the Nokia Map Loader is available on the Nokia Betalabs web site.

Nokia Maps 2.0 and the current commercial version of the Nokia Maps Loader is freely available for selected devices. For download and more information, please visit http://www.maps.nokia.com